After Viewing Edward Hopper’s
Morning in a City – 1944
what a naked redhead really looks like,erect in her hotel room, sunning herself,
in the middle of morning. Don’t you thinkwe should tell them the woman is me,
that you’re not one bit sorry the sceneisn’t more erotic, and argue they’re wrong
if they make too much of the loneliness thing?
Ah, the loneliness thing— poets have such
difficulty with it, don’t they? Alone—
I write, and you paint— is not the same as
being disconnected. These lonely finders
exist everywhere like sullen gamblers,
eager to unearth and confirm our losses,
forgetting some women desire to be so alone,
they hear nothing but their own wry breathing.